Page 55 of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand

Roughly translated it meant “now begins the bad hour.” But la mala hora was much more than that.

A story my abuelas told me. Of a dark figure—a specter of bad tidings—who appeared in the blackest moments of night, bringing with him bad luck and hopelessness—a messenger of evil that haunted the gray corners of dusk and dawn.

Once you were caught in la mala hora , there was no hope.

There was no chance of escape. You were dead.

“What was that?” Danny asked.

I thought about pulling him back, about turning around and trying to walk a few more blocks—perhaps a few more miles—to find something else.

Something less ideal, but certainly less terrifying.

But if I was tired, I knew Danny was feeling worse.

La mala hora —it was everywhere. Settling into this motel for one night wouldn’t make a difference, I thought.

I said a quick padre nuestro and pulled Danny into the motel behind me, the flashlight turned down toward the floor, illuminating only what was right in front of us.

We managed to find a room on the third floor.

It was a mess, but it was empty—and after stripping the bed, it seemed almost livable after the journey to get inside.

My heart ached each time I had to motion for Danny to step over a body or look away from something I knew he’d seen—a limb, a dead mother clutching something that was no longer there, or worse…

the blood. Streaks of it. Droplets. The kind of red you knew meant only one thing, even at Danny’s young age.

I set up the portable, battery-powered lantern on the dresser to illuminate the space.

I saw the loaded handgun, tucked in the back of our stuffed carry-on luggage.

I barely knew how to use it. I never wanted to.

But when we’d walked by the gun store on Bird Road, I knew we needed it.

Something. Anything. “Just in case” became a lot more likely now.

The chance that we’d have to point a gun at something—someone—was almost a certainty.

I closed my eyes for a second, then turned to look at the small space we’d found for the night, the lantern’s light showing more than I probably wanted to see.

The room was drab and dusty. That felt like a victory, at least. The bad stuff was outside the door—the blood, the bodies, the sounds.

I felt my throat tighten as I watched Danny methodically change into his blue spaceship pajamas, as if everything was just fine—we were on a family trip, heading to see friends or his abuelos , perhaps even to Disney World or Epcot.

I remembered dreading those trips. The lack of sleep.

The dysregulated behavior. The tantrums. Erik was no help.

He’d either make a beeline for the hotel bar or just drink in the room, and if he got a few rounds in and something set him off, I had to react.

I learned, over time, that the best thing to do was to leave—to bite the bullet and take Danny out, to the park or anywhere, and just hope Erik didn’t destroy everything while we were gone.

He had become a shell of a man to me at that point—a husk that resembled someone I knew, someone I fell in love with.

In my more rational moments, I knew it was the drinking.

That he was sick. But at other times, when I had to hurry our son outside of a cheap hotel room because his father was throwing up in the bathroom or screaming at the top of his lungs about some tiny, perceived slight—it was at those times I hated him. I wanted him to die.

“Fucker probably is dead. Good.”

I muttered the words to myself as I pulled my ragged shirt up over my head and rummaged through our bag for something new and clean to wear.

There wasn’t any—even the relatively new clothes we’d taken from the abandoned Mervyn’s store we found on the way felt used up.

Everything was soiled and dirty or torn—almost everyone was dead, and for some reason, Danny and I were okay.

On paper, that was a blessing, but in moments like these—pure exhaustion being the only thing I could feel, think about, or understand—it felt like we somehow got shortchanged.

Was it really living if we had to live like this—with nothing, no infrastructure, no friends or family, no safety net?

I couldn’t even turn on the news to see what was happening in the world.

This big, sprawling world that felt so small because of technology was just cramped and empty, with only a tiny crack of light showing what was to come.

I wanted to die.

“Can you tuck me in, Mami?”

I met Danny’s eyes and walked over to where he’d situated himself on the small full-size bed.

He was curled up on the far corner of the mattress, a pile of relatively clean towels serving as blankets bunched together around him, his tiny feet and toes still peeking out from under.

He was using his big stuffed white tiger—the one we got from IKEA when he was three—as a pillow.

It was large enough that he could place his head on it and still clutch the tiger’s puffy, white and black face, its expression blank and distant.

I leaned over and gave Danny a kiss on the forehead, pulling one of the towels up toward his chin as I did.

I looked at him, his eyes at half-mast, his mouth slightly open.

He was so tired. He’d been such a trooper this whole time.

Of course, parenthood was often about grading on a curve. I knew that.

He had complained. He had cried. He had yelled a bit.

But all in all, considering, well, everything…

he’d done great. I leaned forward and pulled his small body toward me, feeling his slow breathing on my neck, the warmth of his face on my cheek.

How he still seemed to smell of that kids’ shampoo we used at home, before.

When showers and baths were not a luxury.

I didn’t realize I was crying until he spoke.

“It’s okay, Mami,” he said, placing his hand on my cheek in the intentional, stiff way of a child imitating a parent. He was trying to comfort me, and somehow that made me feel worse. “We’ll be fine.”

I didn’t respond. I just pulled him closer. I wanted to pull him in so tight, so hard, that he’d disappear into me, that I’d yank us both into another place—a new world. A better world, far from here.

Skrrrrtch.

Skrrrrtttttccchhh.

Skkkkrrrrrtttttcccccchhh.

My eyes opened slowly from deep sleep. It’d felt like the first real sleep in months, maybe more.

The woman was there—Mother Abagail. She’d been looking at me, talking to me, but I couldn’t make it all out.

She wanted me to come to her, toward her.

But where, I asked? How? What about Danny? I could only make out a few words.

“He will be fine, in his own way.”

Then she was gone, a quick cut to the darkness of the room, the only light peeking from the broken blinds—a dim moonlight sneaking into our third-floor motel room.

But that noise.

Skrrrrtch.

Skrrrrtttttccchhh.

Skkkkrrrrrtttttcccccchhh.

My first instinct was to ignore the sound.

The distant, soft scraping. Like someone dragging a rack across a carpeted floor.

But that was an instinct of the old world, I told myself.

Of a time where houses made creaking sounds, sirens and car horns were almost ambient, and hotel yells and hollers were normal and to be ignored—because there were people around doing things, living their lives, and sometimes enjoying them.

Those days were over.

I looked at Danny, still asleep. A peaceful, relaxed state. No worries. No fears. He still held on to that innocence in a way of which I was almost jealous.

I slid out of bed, moving my arm out from under him.

I stepped toward our bag, placed on the other bed.

My hand weaving inside carefully, feeling for the cold metal, wrapping my fingers around the handle.

I felt the heavy metal touch my thigh as I walked toward the door—the door I’d barricaded with a chair here in the room, in addition to the bolt lock that wouldn’t be able to do much if things got bad.

Worse actually, as they were going to be very bad for a long time.

I leaned my head against the door and listened. Nothing. I stepped back and looked at Danny, still curled up into himself, still sleeping.

I thought of the dream—of Mother Abagail’s rough hand, sliding down my face. I could feel every wrinkle and blister. I could see her eyes. Why do these dreams feel so vivid, so unlike anything else?

Thump.

I froze. I heard that. I watched as Danny rustled in his sleep—on the precipice of being awoken, but still clinging to a dream.

The sound had been low and heavy—from the hallway.

Like a few sacks of groceries dropped outside our door.

My grip on the gun tightened. I felt my thoughts spinning, darting around.

Do I wake Danny up? Do we try to bolt and run for the stairs?

I should have mapped out another exit, just in case.

A contingency. But we’d been so tired. We’d walked for days.

And for once, just once, I wanted to rest—to not think about worst-case scenarios, what we might eat, or how we were going to get to the next day. Just for goddamn once.

The sound, but different now. Softer. A light, rhythmic thudding.

Footsteps.

Right outside. We had to move.

I didn’t have the luxury of cracking the door open—I couldn’t just pop my head out to see what was coming. If we were opening this door, we were running, and if we were running, we weren’t coming back.

I turned to grab Danny—to try and, as gently as possible, get him awake and moving, quietly. But as I stepped back and looked at the bed, my heart just about exploded.

He was gone.